


Letters and Truths

by pirategirljack



Series: Weekly Fic Project 2017 [2]
Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Deckerstar - Freeform, F/M, chlocifer, weekly fic project 2017
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-03
Updated: 2017-02-03
Packaged: 2018-09-21 20:29:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9565061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pirategirljack/pseuds/pirategirljack
Summary: Post 2x13, figuring out what comes next. Because I hate cliffhangers!





	

“Mommy, there's a letter for you! It looks fancy!”

Chloe’s heart flipped over as she looked up from her paperwork spread out across the kitchen island. She didn't think his name, it had been weeks without so much as a peep, and cops sometimes got Radom invited to fancy dress parties. It was probably one of those. But something inside her wanted it to be him, and she thought of his smile when Trixie handed it to her, and she had to take a moment to steady her hands.

“It doesn't say who it's from,” Trixie said, frowning. She also didn't say his name; this absence had been as hard on her as it had in Chloe.

She knew the second she saw the handwriting that it was from Lucifer.

“Hey, Monkey, go watch tv, okay? I'm gonna read this letter and see what it's about, and then I'm going to get started on dinner.”

The look her daughter sent her told her she knew she was being sent away and she knew who the letter was from, but she didn't argue, and Chloe was grateful; she suddenly didn't have the strength for a struggle.

The envelope was a rich red like wine, and the writing was gold. Inside, the paper was creamy and smooth, thick and expensive looking--but Lucifer’s usual old-fashioned and practiced-beautiful handwriting was a hasty mess.

Or an emotional one.

 

~~ Detective, ~~

My darling Detective,

This absence is not your fault. I want to get that out ~~right away,~~ right up front, because I haven't been nearly as upfront with you as I should, and I apologize. I didn't leave because of you, and I have been silent all these weeks because I didn't know what to say to help you understand.

I've been at war. With my family. With myself. With the whole world, it seems. They've been manipulating me--us--for reasons I still don't understand, and because of it you almost died. You could have died. And it would have killed me. 

I have never in my life felt how I feel for you. I thought I couldn't. I thought I never would, and I didn't even consider that someone else could return those feelings--for me--the Actual Devil--who is made for being hated. You are a miracle, Chloe Dekker, my miracle, and I mean that literally which is why I needed to leave. I need to know why all this is happening, my brothers, my father, my mother--I need to know what they are doing. And I needed to remove all this danger and drama from your life. You don't deserve this, Detective, you deserve peace and happiness and safety.

I never wanted to hurt you. I'm sorry I didn't call. I'm sorry I didn't come to see you in the hospital, and I'm sorry I didn't come to drive you home when you got out.

I miss you.

I want to come home.

I don't know when I can, and that's the worst part.

Forever,

Your Lucifer

 

Chloe stifled a sob and squeezed her eyes closed before any tears could escape. But at least now she knew he was alive, he had a purpose for leaving. He still cared about her. Maybe that would be enough.

\--

It wasn't enough.

The dreams started that night, and came back every night until Chloe dug through a drawer in her desk and pulled out a pen and paper in the middle of the night and wrote back.

 

Lucifer,

I keep dreaming of you, tall and beautiful, and surrounded by shadows that have teeth. Sometimes there's fire. Sometimes ice. Sometimes terrible things.

Every night.

I hope you're okay. I'm so afraid you're not. What will I do if you don't ever come back? You've changed everything. I miss you like a severed limb--an irritating and troublesome one, but vital, and close to my heart. 

Please come home soon.

Chloe

 

It felt dumb, writing a letter she had no way of sending. There's been nothing on the fancy envelope but her name and address, and a stamp she didn't recognize the pattern of. But it also felt better, getting all the fear and sadness out, even if no one would ever know it.

She went back to bed and it felt cold and too big and too empty, despite no one having been there in a long time to have changed how it felt.

\--

And then one day, after weeks of nightmares, months since she'd found him gone, she opened her door and found him there. He hadn't knocked--he was standing a few feet back from the door, not facing it, half turned away, and as surprised as she was.

“I didn't know if you'd want to see me--” he started, but she was already moving. She dropped her purse to the ground, dropped her keys, and all but flew into his arms. He rocked back but he caught her, his arms so tight it almost stopped her from feeling like she was splintering into a thousand conflicting feelings.

“Detective,” he breathed, as if the word was the same thing as air and he hadn't had any in far too long. She could feel his heart hammering against her chest, she was so tight against his.

“You're back,” she said, feeling like an idiot for stating the obvious, but she didn't know what else to say. “Are you back?”

“I am.”

“For good?”

“Forever. If you still want me?” The uncertainty in his voice ran like an electric current through her, and suddenly she was mad--mad and hurt and relieved and scared and a hundred other things all at once.

“Of course I do, you idiot! All I've wanted for months was for you to come back! All that time in the hospital, and you never came back. You said I looked heaven sent and then you never came back and I thought it was because of what I said--I thought I'd scared you off by saying we’d talk! And Trixie! What could I say to her that wouldn't make everything worse? Scarier? Why didn't you _call_!” 

Just as suddenly as the anger has flared, it crumbled into dust, and a the tears she hadn't been crying came flooding out into his shirt. He smelled so good--he always smelled good, like expensive cologne and lingering hints of rich booze and sweet smoke, things that should have been off putting and weren't at all on him--but to have him back, real and solid and warm…

“I thought you hated me. For weeks I thought it. You were my partner--and you just left--And then that beautiful letter--”

She looked up into his face, and there was no hate there. No gloating, no smug veneer. Just pain and sadness and a longing so deep it felt like looking down into the ocean.

“I could never hate you.”

“Never?”

“Not a chance in all of eternity.”

“Do you--do you want to come in?” What she meant to say was, _do you want back into my life, my work, my world. Do you want what we never talked about and never defined._

“More than anything in the world. But--but there are things you need to know before we can just pick up where we left off.” His face, equal parts relief and fear, need and sadness, scared her, but she took his hand and opened the door and was determined to be as calm and balanced as she could be.

She backed into the house, and he followed and closed the door behind him the way someone might close their own mausoleum door. 

“What is it?”

“I have never lied to you,” he said, “but I allowed you to believe I had, which is almost the same thing. I'm sorry for that, too. Maybe if you knew, you wouldn't have ever liked me. Maybe that's why I didn't correct you.” He looked down, away. Ashamed? She wouldn't have thought it was possible.

“Lucifer.”

“No one has ever just seen me--who I am, without all the...the stories.”

“What are you talking about.”

“Please--please just sit down, and--and try to brace yourself--I think--I think things will be clear in a moment.”

She sat. On the edge of the sofa, her knees clamped together, her heart in her throat, every nerve telling her something terrible was coming, that she should run. But he crouched on the floor before her, lower than her, looking up into her face the way saints did in old paintings, holding her hands like a prayer, and she had to hear him out.

“I'm sorry,” he said, “for all of this.” He waved his hand, indicating himself and by implication, everything that came with him, and then between one too-fast heartbeat and the next, his face changed--but even that quickly, she felt, instinctively, that it had been a slow change, that he was trying not to startle her.

It didn't work.

She almost screamed. She did jerk back--but not so hard that her hand left his. She'd been holding his gaze when the change happened, and even though his eyes were now a different color, they were still his. Soft and so sad. His face was red, somehow looking like it was both flayed and burned, and his teeth were sharp, and his ears were pointed, but he was frozen still, waiting.

He looked like a monster, but he was afraid of her. Afraid of her reaction.

And he was hoping, and afraid of that, too.

She took a weird wobbly breath, and looked at his gnarled hand wrapped around hers, and ran her free hand over it. Then up his arm, over his shoulder, to his face, careful at first, and then with more confidence as her hand said one thing and her eyes said another.

“You feel the same. You feel like--you.”

“ _This_ is me. It always has been.”

“But--but you feel the same. You're acting like your face is a secret, a horrible one that no one should have to see, one that makes you unlovable…” She cupped his cheek and he moved into the touch like he'd never been touched kindly before. “But if you can choose to look either way, but you feel the same no matter what you look like, then what you look like doesn't matter. You're still you.”

His head fell to her shoulder and his arms wrapped around her and gathered her to him. The smell of smoke was stronger, but it was still a sweet tobacco-y smell, not brimstone or sulphur.

“My miracle,” he mumbled into her shoulder, over and over. 

And she wrapped her arms around him and held him...but the implications were starting to sink in. “Amenadiel?”

“First of the angels, the Wrath of God,” he said into her hair. "Older brother, always a bit of a tool."

“Maze?”

“Mazikeen, soulless demon and my best torturer in hell, bound to protect me until she decided to _find herself_.” There was no rancor in his voice, only wonder.

“Charlotte?”

“Actually Charlotte, until she had the misfortune to die as mother was looking for a physical form on the mortal plane.”

“Mother?”

“The goddess of all creation--and, as it runs out, also destruction.”

He pulled back to look her in the eye, back in his human face, that was so much easier to read. And she read uncertainty there, worry, more hope than before, but also a deeper sort of fear. She could still refuse him. She could still crush him.

But she didn't want to.

“And your father is actually--”

“God, yes. Though he's been away for the last several millennia and no one's seen much of him. He's still there pulling strings, though. And that's why I had to go--to see what it meant. To find out what he was up to.”

“Did you?”

And he frowned. “No. I only know what's already happened.”

“Are we safe?”

“I think so. He--he put you in my path. He wants us to know each other. I don't know why.”

“I'm--I'm part of this?”

“You are. Does it scare you?”

She almost answered yes, but when she said no instead, she knew it was the truth the second the word was out of her mouth. “I'm not afraid. I'm just--”

“Confused? Worried? Overcome by all-consuming carnal lust?”

“The first two, mostly.” She almost smiled. He almost smiled back, and that wicked twinkle was back.

“The third one a little bit?”

“Slow down, Hellboy, give a girl a minute.”

The cheeky flirtatiousness flickered out, confirming the suspicions she’d always had that it was a defense mechanism, and he very carefully and very gently touched her face like she was a work of art he shouldn't be touching but couldn't help himself. “You can have all the time in the world. You can have anything you want.”

For a second, that felt like too big a temptation, something that would definitely lead to wreck and ruin, and possibly an endless fall into an actual and literal Hell. For a second, she felt like she was standing at the edge of an abyss.

But if she was, it was one that was his, and she was feeling reckless in this unexpected happiness. Reckless, but still reasonable, because fundamentally, that's what she was.

“How about a real date? And a proper catching up on what's been going on?”

“Anything.”

He bumped his forehead against hers like he did that day outside the lab, and she couldn't help herself and kissed him, and it was the same as before--no sharp teeth, no forked tongue, just them, together, like two halfs of a whole.


End file.
